Friday, November 19, 2010

Adding Blogger Gadgets & Customizing Headers

I get really excited when, after I give a keynote or do a preso at a conference, people from those events contact me later with questions about new things they are trying that is making them feel that awkward growing feeling! Much like I felt a few weeks ago with creating my first Wikipedia page....

Several of these wonderful educators are trying to create new blogs and Twittering for the first time! A very close friend of mine (we went to grad school together - hey Kathy Glascock!) asked me for design help with her blog headeranother friend (not new to blogging) asked for design help with his blog header (Hey Chad Lehman!) Oh and I gotta say sorry... I'm not avail to make any more custom blog headers unless you throw tons of cash my way because I'm really busy now and I'd REEELY like an iPad! LOLSo a lovely lady I met when I was the keynote at CASL - Robin Stiles emailed me last week and asked the following questions:

"Ok, question for you...or maybe a couple.How do I put in the widget like you have on "daring" with the "Subscribe to/Posts/All Comments?How do I plunk in an RSS feed?Advice on my settings?When you are a follower shouldn't the blog do directly to a follower's email address/inbox?"

This comic on Blogger answers a lot of those questions ...Adding Widgets and making a design choice about your header - whether to upload a header pic that has your blog name and subtitle already on it or upload a header pic and type in the blog name and sub head.

I give directions for both and the HTML needed to make it look SWEET!

Just creating that tutorial inspired me to morph and mix up mine! So YAY! I love it when I can create something that answers questions easily and graphically..I'm such a flippin visual learner! And I get inspired to create these when it seems as if it's needed or I get asked more than a couple times questions about the same thing.Oh and the Width of the header should be no more than 650 X 310 pixels seems to work best!

Take, share, use!

Enjoy!

And I gotta say I'm a MAC grrl so you won't likely see any comics about PC stuffs. But with so many sites being platform agnostic - it really doesn't matter so much anymore!

Also, I keep getting asked so I'll share again...All these comics are made with the program Comic Life that I've blogged about before that is VERY INEXPENSIVE and does come in a MAC and PC WIN version!

"Use Comic Life to explore storyboarding of students' plays and movies, document school outings, acquire language skills and as an easy-to-use tool for creating worksheets, flash cards, lesson plans and much more. This license is for students and educators."

What inspires you to create stuff? What comic tutorials would you like to see me make next?

Ownership. Other people create amazing work and I'm passionate about sharing outstanding resources with others. But taking an idea and making it your own... that's money. Pouring hours, creativity, and consideration into a work so that it reflects you and (hopefully) will be of use to others... it's such an intrinsically fulling task.

What comic tutorials would you like to see me make next?

I think we need to have a couple comics on Gearing Up for a Conference (those ways we can have open minds and ready scribes to soak in all the great things... and then reflect and share following). You go to so many conferences, I'd love to see how you get your gameface on and what you never forget to pack to make the most of a conference.

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About Me

Gwyneth A. Jones, aka The Daring Librarian, is a blogger, a Tweeter, an international Ed Tech speaker, trope and meme archivist, creator of content, a citizen of advocacy, and a resident of social media. Gwyneth is a Google Certified Teacher, and the author of the award winning Daring Librarian blog. Privileged to have been elected and to have served on the 2011-2014 ISTE Board of Directors. Jones is also a Library Journal Mover & Shaker, a Gale/Cengage New Leader, and was named the Best of the Best and a Visionary Leader by Teacher Librarian Magazine. Her work & writings have been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Huffington Post. Admittedly, she’s also a goofball, a geek, and ridiculously humble.

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